Stop the World
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: What happens when you mix Beckett's rebellious nature with Castle's knack for getting into trouble in one seventeen year old girl? You get Hanna James Castle who is just trying to survive her high school, losing her boyfriend, and a family secret. - Castle/Beckett future family fic.
1. Chapter 1

**This story blindsided me the other day and began to write itself this afternoon. Please enjoy and leave a review!**

**Disclaimer: Nothing recognizable in this story is mine nor do I wish to make any profit from this venture. **

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The holding cell is empty save for the seventeen year old girl tugging at the handcuffs tethering her to the bench she was seated on. Her father had taught her how to escape handcuffs just after her fifth birthday when he'd been in the middle of crafting a junior spy novel but, somehow, she figured adding 'escaping arrest' would do little for her case at the moment. Still, tugging at the cuffs gave her something to do while she waited for one or both of her parents to collect her from the Brooklyn precinct. Her dark honey curls fell across her face and she let out a vodka flavored huff as she gave the metal chain a good yank before sinking back in frustrated defeat.

"Hanna James Castle," it was her father's voice from the doorway behind her. The way he crafted her name on his tongue was icy, controlled with layers of rage buried underneath – she had let him down, scared him, and broken his trust.

She tilted her head back to look at him and sighed at the sight of her twelve year old brother, Martin, fiddling with his Nintendo DS behind their father's back. "Yes daddy?"

"Underage drinking at a college party, Hanna? The officers said they took a kid to the hospital with an overdose of molly, that there was plenty of drug use going on! You had no business being there and you know it! You lied about it, Hanna, so you sure as hell knew it was wrong!" She had never seen her father this angry before, never seen him look at her with that much disgust.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Apology noted but not accepted at the moment." Richard Castle looked at his middle child and sighed. Alexis was never the problem child – even when she acted out, she tended to punish herself before he even had a chance – so he didn't quite know how to handle Hanna's rebellion. "I am going to pay your bail and then your mother and I will discuss your punishment with you in the morning."

"Yes sir." Hanna sank back against the bars. Things didn't use to be this way but lately all she wanted to do was cry and scream; the drinking helped mute the urges because if she were to tap into those feelings she would never make it out of bed in the morning. She knew she had no business being at that party but the offer of free booze and music so loud she couldn't hear herself think had been too good, too alluring to turn down. She hoped that kid in the hospital was okay, she truly did.

The police officer who came to undo her cuffs and escort her out of holding eyed her with contempt. "Your mother is a good captain."

"I know."

"She could be a great Chief of Police someday."

Hanna rolled her eyes but nodded. "I know."

"She'll never get the position with a daughter like you around."

"I'll be sure to give her your sympathies," Hanna promised curtly before making her way to the desk to collect her personal items.

Her brother practically danced on the toes of his Chuck Taylor's as she approached and he grinned up at her – their father's grin, the one that greeted her each morning in the mirror. "You've got to go to court."

"Martin Charles…" Castle's voice was tight with warning as he gave his son a light thump on the ear in correction. "Behave please."

"Yes sir." The twelve year old smiled as he turned back to his game.

Rick switched his focus back to his daughter who, in that very moment, reminded him so very much of his wife that it nearly bowled him over. Hannah was Kate all over again – personality and all, especially at seventeen, Jim Beckett had promised. She looked so small as she pulled on the worn leather jacket she had inherited from her mother on her thirteenth birthday and pulled her long dark locks from the collar before turning her eyes toward him – so very green, Kate's green. "Wednesday after school with Judge Mitchell – he's a juvenile court judge and pretty fair, according to Officer Pritchard, so hopefully things will go in your favor."

"Whatever," she muttered as she fumbled with the zipper on the coat.

"No, Hanna, not whatever. Do you realize what could have happened tonight? You could have gotten drugged, you could have gotten alcohol poisoning, and it could be you in that hospital. It could be you in the morgue, Hanna! It was a college party and you're just a kid! You could still have screwed yourself out of college opportunities and you could have royally screwed with your mother's chances of career advancement."

"Fine," Hanna interjected. "Can we please go home?"

"Go to the car."

She crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her head as she marched outside to the awaiting town car. Her dad's cell phone rang as Martin slid in next to her and she heard him answer it outside for a moment of privacy. She strained to hear the conversation over her brother's video games.

"Kate, she's fine." Rick comforted his wife. "If she was drunk, she's sober now. Her blood alcohol level was right at the legal limit but she has to go to court on Wednesday – Judge Mitchell. They picked her up at some college aged house party in Brooklyn, Kate. Some kid got taken to the hospital with a drug overdose." Hanna sighed. "I don't know what is going on with her anymore but this is not okay. Yeah. I love you too. See you when you get home."

Rick slid into the car then, flipping Martin's DS closed as he did. "No more 'til morning. You're already up way past bed time." Hanna is quiet as she sits in her seat, fiddling with the class ring that has been on her thumb for almost two years now. "Too bed when we get home, the both of you. Hanna, we will discuss everything with mom in the morning, okay?" Rick watches with a sad smile while she fiddles with the ring. "It's okay to miss him, honey."

"I'm fine." She pushes the hair back from her face and sets her jaw – so very Kate Beckett's daughter.

He shakes his head. "This isn't fine, Hanna James."

"Whatever," she echoes her earlier refrain.

It wasn't always like this; two years ago and Hanna had been the epitome of a daddy's girl, just like Alexis before her. She had been all about good grades (mostly because she liked school but partly because of competition with her sister) and trying to fit flute music into her beloved heavy metal. Then the spring of her freshman year came and Hanna had fallen victim to the allure of seventeen year old Mika. Mika hadn't been bad – Rick even considered him a great first boyfriend for his wild child. The teenagers had been swept away into a whirlwind romance as kids their age are apt to do. Then the previous Christmas break had found the Castles at their home in the Hamptons for the holiday and Mika had come to visit the day after Christmas because the two simply couldn't bear to go another day without seeing one another. They had spent a wonderful day together playing in the snow on the beach and exchanging Christmas presents by the fire but as the sun began to set, Mika was forced to head back into the city.

They had gotten the call three hours later from Mika's uncle. There had been an accident – Mika's car had hit a patch of black ice on one of coastal New York's more curve ridden roads. They had declared him brain dead not long after arrival to the hospital but it had taken several days before the family had removed the teenage boy from life support. Rick could still remember the look on his daughter's face the moment the heartbeat monitor had flatlined and the way she had sobbed in his arms in the stairwell where she finally allowed herself to breakdown. They had taken her to therapy for several months afterward only to be told she was fine and grieving normally. Now, almost a year later, nothing with his daughter seemed fine – it seemed as though she was running headlong toward death.

Kate was waiting for them when they got home and he was grateful. She kissed their son on his head before sending him on his way up the stairs. "Come here, sweetheart," Kate urged their daughter. "Hanna James Castle. Come here."

"I'm sorry," Hanna whispered as she fell into her mother's embrace. Rick watched from the foyer where he was hanging all their coats; Hanna seemed to relax under Kate's touch, her tough mother chasing away all the demons that plagued her. "I'm so sorry, mama."

"Stop, baby," Kate ordered. "I love you and I could have lost you tonight. Let me hold you for a minute, okay? There's time for yelling and apologies in the morning."

"Yes ma'am." Hanna sniffled and burrowed into her mother's chest for a moment. "I love you."

"To bed," Kate ordered with a kiss to her forehead.

Rick caught Hanna's arm as they met at the base of the staircase. "I do love you, Han."

"I love you, too, daddy." And then she was off, up the stairs, hiding away in her room once more. It felt like an entire ocean between them. She was so much like Kate when he first met her; walls up, shut off to anything that might dare hurt her again, and he was scared – petrified – that he wouldn't be able to save his daughter from herself.

Kate was at his side then, fingers curled at his arm. "She's going to be okay, Rick."

"She's so angry, Kate. She's closed herself off to the world and I'm not sure we can reach her." He spoke to his wife but stared up at his daughter's room, wishing for a sign from the cosmos that his daughter could be reached. "She's drinking, her grades are slipping, and now she's gotten arrested. It's like she's given up on everything."

"Grief does that," Kate promised. "She's still grieving, Castle. It might come in short bursts now but it's still something she has to battle and I can't promise that she'll ever really get over it but she'll learn to live with the grief. She's part you and part me, Richard Castle. She's not going to give up and we aren't either."

"I jus-"

"We can't fix it all tonight, Rick." She pulled at his hand. "It is time for bed. We'll work on it tomorrow."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you so much for all your reviews. I am so overwhelmed and humbled by the response to this story! I hope you continue to enjoy this endeavor because I certainly am. **

**Disclaimer: I still own nothing.**

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The coffee finished percolating as Kate made her way to the kitchen in the dim morning light. She filled her usual mug to the brim with the dark roast and then, on a whim, she pulled the old Tardis mug from the back of the cupboard. It had been Hanna's sixteenth birthday gift from Mika and Kate longed for the way Hanna had smiled behind the mug each morning for the brief month and a half between her birthday and the passing of her boyfriend. She filled the blue mug with coffee and the mint-chocolate creamer that the seventeen year old was so fond of before making for the stairs.

Kate paused outside Hanna's door and sighed softly; she missed her daughter deeply. She missed Hanna's infectious smile and the very Castle way she used to craft stories about her day, usually infused with laughter that seemed to come from her toes. It pained to know that her daughter had inherited her way of grieving. It had taken Kate more than a decade to fully recover from her mother's murder and she couldn't sit idly by as her daughter headed down a very similar tumultuous path.

With careful practice, she shuffled the coffee mugs to one hand as she opened the door. Hanna was cocooned in her blankets, burrowed against the far wall with just a mop of curly brown hair spilling out across her pillows. Kate navigated the piles of books and dirty clothes that seemed to litter the floor and placed the mugs on the bedside table before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. She watched Hanna breathe for a moment before stretching out beside the girl and tangling a hand in the locks that matched her own. "Hannie," Kate whispered. "You're being a blanket hog – share with mama?"

"Ma?" Hanna's brow furrowed as she rolled over. "What are you doing in my bed?"

"I had this terrible dream," Kate explained as she pulled part of the comforter over her legs. "I had this dream that you went a college party and drank things you know you shouldn't have and maybe tried some other things that you knew better than to try before getting arrested."

"I'm sorry," Hanna breathed. "It must suck to have me as a kid."

"No, Hanna." Kate sat up and pulled the teenager with her. "Look at me," she demanded. "You, Martin, and Alexis are the best thing to have ever happened to me and daddy, okay? And no matter what you do, no matter how badly you mess up… I am always going to love you, Hanna James Castle."

"Even if my existence totally screws you out of Chief of Police?"

"I don't give a damn about being Chief of Police, Hanna!" Kate tried to tame her anger. "Nothing matters to me as much as this family and that includes you, Hanna. I love my job a lot but not nearly as much as I love being your mother. Nothing could ever be more important than you or your siblings, Hanna – especially some hypothetical job as Chief of Police which I'm not even sure I want."

"Okay." Hanna felt small then and pulled her knees up to her chest.

"I brought you coffee," she whispered and reached behind her for the mug to present it to her daughter.

"The Tardis," Hanna breathed as tears pooled. "I haven't used that since…"

"I know," Kate sighed. "It is okay to miss him and it is okay to be angry. It's okay to feel whatever you're feeling but you have to live your life. Start with the coffee."

She nodded and took a long pull from the mug, waiting a few beats before speaking again. "Three weeks and he'll have been gone a year."

"I know."

"I still wake up sometimes and check my phone for messages from him. I still look for him in the halls at school… I have to pretend that he's off at college just to get through the day sometimes. Like he'll be home on break from school but he isn't coming home."

"No, honey, he isn't." Kate carefully pulled her daughter into her arms and kissed her head. "After your grandma was killed, I went back to school for one last semester because she and grandpa had already paid tuition. While I was there I would pretend that grandma was at home waiting for me, that her case load was full and that was why I hadn't heard from her in awhile."

"What happened when you got home?"

"I had to deal with the fact that she wasn't there and she was never going to be there again."

Hanna sniffled. "How?"

"I cried a lot," Kate confessed. She pressed her lips to Hanna's temple and let them linger there for a moment - out of comfort for herself or for Hanna, she wasn't sure. "I found your dad's books and read them cover to cover. I talked to a therapist. When I was ready, I joined the academy."

"It hurts so much that I can't breathe sometimes," she breathed. "It feels like I'm going to die if I have to breathe one more breath without him."

"You're going to be okay," Kate promised. "Daddy and I won't let anything happen to you."

"It feels too late; like I'm already gone."

"You're alive," Kate breathed the words into her ear. "I've got you."

Hanna began to weep then. "Ma-"

"I have you, baby." Hanna curled her hand into Kate's hair like she did when she was a baby, ear pressed against her chest with her mother's heartbeat thrumming like a calming metronome.

The door cracked open and Rick's voice called to them. "Kate? Hanna?"

"Rick," Kate replied and held her hand out to him as he stepped into the room.

His heart broke at the sight before him; his baby girl sobbing into her mother's chest as the reality of her world came crashing down around her. He crossed to them, immediately taking them both in his arms. The girl abandoned her mother to curl into her father's touch and he pressed kisses to the crown of her hair. "Hey princess," he whispered into her hair. "Do you know how much I love you?"

"Too much," Hanna protested. Self destruction would have been easier had her parents not cared so very much.

"No." His voice was strong and deep, reverberating in his chest so that she could feel it against her cheek. "Never too much."

"I'm sorry for last night."

"You're so forgiven, kid," he promised. "I got that call and I got scared, Hanna. More scared than I have been in a very long time – possibly the most scared I have ever been. You are so precious and you have so much left to do with life. So many things could have happened last night, so many things could have gone wrong."

"Mika had so much left to do."

"He did, Hanna, and it is so unfair that he doesn't get to live that future."

"But, honey," Kate interjected. "You do. You get to live, Hanna. Don't waste that opportunity."

Hanna nodded and wiped her tears on the hoodie she had slept in. "What's my punishment?"

"Parental escort," Castle answered. "For the next month you do not go anywhere without one of us so that we know you are where you say you will be."

"That's fair," she agreed.

"We ever get another cal like that and your butt is sitting in jail," Kate added.

"Fair."

"The Snow White of fair," Castle informed her.

"Yes sir."

"Now," Kate addressed them both. "It is my day off and I want to spend it with my family. Let's go wake Marty, call Alexis and Martha, and have breakfast."

"Sounds perfect," Castle declared before pecking his wife on the mouth and ruffling his daughter's hair as he clambered off the bed. "You ladies do your lady things; I will wake the boy and call Alexis and mother."

He ducked out the door then and Hanna waited until she heard him pounding on her little brother's door before grasping her mother's wrist. "Ma?"

"Han?" Kate paused at the edge of the bed, turning back to face her daughter.

"Do you think that you could take me to the cemetery later?" She bowed her head to hide the tears, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear before addressing her mother. "I haven't been since the funeral and I just… I need to go."

"Absolutely." Kate kissed her head before climbing off the bed and making for the door. "We'll go after breakfast, okay?"

Hanna nodded. Left alone in her room, she moved around to collect things for the day. She plucked a clean pair of jeans from a pile on the floor, found a clean button down in her drawers, and grabbed her Converse from under the edge of her bed before heading for the bathroom. On a whim, she plucked the coffee mug from her bedside stand and took it with her. Martin was emerging from the bathroom as she approached and the twelve year old took her in for a moment before stepping up and hugging her. "I'm glad you're okay, Hanna."

"Thanks bud." She shuffled things around to get an arm around him before ruffling his hair. "Now get out of my way, twerp."

"Aye, Captain Butt-face." Martin gave her a mock salute before stepping out of her way. Hanna rolled her eyes and gave him a shove but smiled as she stepped into the bathroom.


End file.
